


Help, I'm Alive

by timeheist



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 15:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1988469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/timeheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn’t a strong man, nor was he a congenitally brave one. No amount of scientific knowledge could have prepared him for the duties that a skitarii was raised to shoulder, or for the frailty of flesh, torn apart by claws and tendrils.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Help, I'm Alive

“This is Magos Uriah Kaltos. Can-can anyone hear me?”

“Magos. Is something wrong?”

Of all the augmentation that he had, Uriah Kaltos had never gotten around to replacing his vocal chords with a more suitable vox set. Other things had seemed more suitable, especially in his line of work; mechadendrites, bionic eyes, electro grafts to replace the skin of his right hand. Things he could use to further the research of a servant of the Omnissiah. Today, though, he would have been quite happy of a vox set, or indeed some way of projecting his voice directly into microphone of the vox-set he wore without having to make a sound. He wasn’t perfect – large parts of him were still flesh – and in times like this, adrenaline got the better of him. He was certain that his heart was already beating like a hammer, and he didn’t need to make any more sounds that could lead the xenos he was hiding from right to him.

“Magos?”

He bit his tongue to stop from snapping. Imbeciles. Youngsters, new to the Adeptus Mechanicus like he had one been, surely. They were too emotional, too worried about him, and fools to rush a Magos. If he made the slightest sound, every tyranid in the tunnels might be on him within minutes. Possibly even seconds! Every now and then he heard the skittering of claws, or the hissing of inhuman breath.

He thanked the Omnissiah that either they were further away than he realised, or there were no genestealers amongst them. Their sense of smell would have been the death of him, and he doubted that they would leave enough of him untouched to protect his research, that it might fall into the hands of anyone who could study it and make good use. He wasn’t by any means a man to brag, but his work was important. The only reason he had been allowed to accompany the Skitarii into the tunnels at all and hadn’t been taken to safety like the rest of the non-combatants was that his research within the Magos Biologis had always been into xenos, and it was a vocation that he was undeniably good at. His memory, even without the help of augments, was eidetic. He never forgot a thing.

Despite himself, he found that he had cupped his hands over his mouth and the earpiece of the vox-set, irrationally convinced that some sound would get out. Steel and electo-grafted fingers grasped at his jaw so tightly that he knew when he moved them, the part of his face that was still flesh would be red with trapped blood. He scowled, chastising himself. Any incoming sound would be muted to the outside world, he knew that, had blessed the set himself as well as the rest of their equipment before they had set out into the tunnels. It was his own voice that was the problem, but he couldn’t dare cut the connection and eliminate the risk. The aid of any Tech Priests who were listening was his only hope.

Taking the risk, he controlled the stammer in his voice and hissed into the mouth-piece, cursing his own body.

“We were caught off guard by the tyranid swarm. I am the only survivor.”

“What of the Skitarii?”

“I am the only survivor.”

Uriah spoke quickly and as quietly as he could, his voice without guilt. His confirmation was unpleasant, yes, but the Skitarii would not have seen it that way. To their eyes, they would have died protecting the Adeptus Mechanicus. Though he could not doubt the Omnissiah, the Magos was beginning to doubt their decision to hold the planet. It had only been three days since the tyranids had been found on Gryphonne IV.

The Inquisition had confirmed that the Hive Fleet Leviathan was in the sector, but the governor and the highest Magos had refused them their Exterminatus. The Skitarii on their planet were second to none. The Legio Gryphonnicus were one of the finest defenders in the South side of the galaxy. Though they had accepted the offer of evacuation for any who would go – after all, the Imperium could not leave the builders of Imperial Guard weaponry and vehicles to their expected deaths – the Magos Biologis and the Skitarii had elected to remain, Uriah among them.

He knew now that they had been proud to think themselves a match for the tyranids, an emotion that so many of them were ‘proud’ to claim no longer gripped them. With Warp travel, there was no telling if they would be run over in a day or a week or a month, but run over they would be, and the tyranids would continue to gain in mass. In another four days, they would have spread at least 200km in every direction from the point of infiltration, which was still to be found. In another week, 800km, leaving behind no water safe to drink. There had been four men and women with him, and at least thirty more in other parts of the tunnels. Uriah shuddered to imagine their twisted bodies or worse, to find them walking atop the surface with minor wounds, carrying the taint of xeno DNA.

Uriah was not a fighter. He was a well-built man because his occupation led to exercise, and his underlings forgot that he didn’t always need to eat. At nearly two metres he was unremarkable for Magos, with brown eyes and brown hair that needed trimming, if he made it out alive. He had a beard, because in the days when he’d not known the Omnissiah’s blessing, he’d been far more naïve. A girl had told him that a beard became him and these days, he didn’t always remember to shave it off. There were more important things on his mind, the previously neglected Omnissiah one of them. Still, even with three mechadendrites, a metal hand, bionic eyes, a potentia coil, and so many other augments, it was the beard that defined him. It was an irregularity on an otherwise regular man. And absolutely nothing about him explained how he had been able to run and survive where an elite force of soldiers had been torn apart.

“Magos? Can you hear me?” Uriah shook his heard, cursing himself for becoming lost in thoughts. He had become accustomed to filtering out the sounds of static in his head, and he realised now that he’d not noticed the signal in his vox-set dying momentarily, as he continued to creep in the direction that he was sure they had come. Maybe he had lost altitude briefly? His earpiece crackled and fizzed again, and he clenched his teeth tightly shut, crouching dead still and waiting to hear more. “Do you require extraction? Aid?”

“Both.” He didn’t often sound excited. It was an unnecessary emotion. “Either.” He paused, before adding in a more hushed tone, “It is imperative that my observations regarding tyranid activity are relayed to the Ordo Xenos.”

He stopped once more, listening for the sounds of the creatures, and reaching for the hellgun that he had stowed under the white, red and gold robes of his office. He’d made this gun, or one like it, at least. He knew how they worked, and he had helped to make them better, to help the machine spirit inside them flourish and to aid the Imperium. In his younger days he had made other guns, too, before his time with the Inquisitor and the genesis of his calling in the Magos Biologis. Weaponry and vehicles for the Imperial Guard, and Inquisitors willing to trade for them. He knew how to fire the gun, and which end to point at the enemies of the Imperium. But this wasn’t his gun; he had taken it from the body of a dead skitarii, to defend himself. He’d never fired a gun before, and he’d had no idea that the recoil would send shivers up his arm, or that the sound would deafen him.

He wasn’t a strong man, nor was he a congenitally brave one. No amount of scientific knowledge could have prepared him for the duties that a skitarii was raised to shoulder, or for the frailty of flesh, torn apart by claws and tendrils. The litany that had been drilled into him so often in his younger days, when he had left Gryphonne IV, rose to the forefront of his mind, and he risked another few seconds of speech to, strange even to him, offer something that might comfort both members of the conversation.

“The- the lives of many faithful servants of the Imperium and of the Omnissiah depend on it.”

“Yes Magos.” Uriah could hear more static, and the sound of hands moving swiftly across metal buttons, machinery that clicked and tapped in a reassuring manner. He let out some of the breath he had been holding carefully, calmed by the idea that to the best of his knowledge, keyboards weren’t lethal, and he would be back behind them and out of these tunnels soon enough. “Do you know your coordinates?”

The data slate in his pocket was in pieces. Uriah made a mental note to ask the machine spirit to forgive him, for it had broken his fall in the first attack. Hopefully the data on it would be extractable with some prayer and hard work, but for the time being, any map he might have had access to was lost. It rattled uselessly against his thigh, beside a strip of fabric torn from one wrist of his robes, stained with blood that wasn’t human.

“Can you track this signal?”

“Yes, Magos. The Omnissiah protects.”

Uriah repeated the platitude, but the signal had already been cut. At least now they both knew which frequency to find each other on. He was closer to the exit, even if he was, for the most part, lost. He would get out of this alive and he would get word to the inquisition. The planet may have been lost, but at least some of its people, and its worth, might still be saved. If he could get on a ship himself, he would take his novices and do so, and pray that the Skitarii surpassed his newfound expectations.

For now, though, there was just keeping moving, and surviving.


End file.
